NONPROFIT · WE TEACH. WE DON’T BUILD.
Home of the Super Energy-Efficient & Healthy Home (and Building)
Carbonless means a carbonless footprint. Carbon is not the enemy. Every living thing needs it. A carbonless footprint means you tread lightly: you live the way you want, in a home that is safe, healthy and breathing, and it does not cost you more every month.
Carbonless is a nonprofit that teaches people how to build and fix homes and buildings that stay dry and healthy and cost less to heat, cool and live in. I wrote all 40 courses of Carbonless 2126 before Carbonless had a single sponsor, so they answer only to the building. Twenty founding members already do this work.
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About 90 million views in 2026, as counted by Carbonless · More than 180,000 followers on Facebook and Instagram, almost all gained since Carbonless started posting in late November 2025 · About 20 founding members · 40 courses · 52 years in the field · Brian’s own house: about $165,000 to build, about $132 a square foot, about $60 a month for every utility
WHAT CARBONLESS ALREADY IS
The knowledge exists. The experience exists. Now we put it to work.
A $60 utility bill. A $132-a-square-foot house.
Brian Iverson built a two-story, three-bedroom, two-bath house from a Habitat for Humanity plan for about $132 a square foot, about $165,000 in all. His whole utility bill runs about $60 a month: heating, cooling and everything else in the house. Inside, the air stays around 45 percent humidity. It wasn’t built with expensive name-brand products. It was built with the walls, the roof, the air sealing and the moisture control done right, from materials you can buy today. Results depend on the house, the weather and how people live in it.
52 years. Brian developed about 3,000 residential lots, about 2,000 of them for affordable housing, designed more than 750 homes and handled more than 3,000 real estate closings. He is a former Minnesota Certified Energy Auditor.
About 20 founding members. Independent professionals in the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom who design, build, test, finance, insure, inspect, restore and remodel homes and buildings, with an estimated 10,000 projects between them. Meet them in the public Directory and contact their businesses directly.
About 90 million views. In 2026, with no paid advertising, as counted by Carbonless. More than 180,000 followers on Facebook and Instagram, almost all gained since Carbonless started posting in late November 2025. Consulting reaches as far as Greenland and France.
Healthy and safe, not just efficient. A building should keep the people inside it healthy: control moisture so mold has a much harder time getting started, bring in fresh air and filter it, cut down smoke and chemicals, test for radon, and stay livable through heat, cold and long power outages. No building can promise zero exposure. A well-built one lowers the risk a lot.
Carbonless is a global nonprofit helping people everywhere build and keep healthier, more efficient, more affordable and longer-lasting homes and buildings. It teaches. It is not a general contractor, a homebuilder or a remodeling company, and it does not do construction work. The footprint we leave behind matters more than the credit we receive.
Talk your building through with Brian
Bring your plans, your problem or your questions. I have nothing to sell you but what I know, and one conversation can save you thousands.
I have been on about 25,000 jobs as a realtor, an architectural designer, a remodeler and a carpenter. Today I consult every day, and most of what I see is damage from something that was done a long time ago. A house or a building can only be fixed as well as the work that was done before it. That is why the first conversation matters.
New here? Try the first course of Carbonless 2126 free.
Pick the path that fits what you’re working on.
Build a New Home / Building
The decisions you make on paper set your heating bill, your comfort and your repairs for the next hundred years. Most of the costly mistakes happen before the first shovel. I’ve designed more than 750 buildings and made those mistakes so you don’t have to. Learn what to ask before you sign anything.
Inside: THE BOX, the $49.99 playbook and checklist. The free calculator that shows what a better wall costs on your own building. Real wall and roof R values. A field guide that follows real houses and buildings through every stage, in more than 150 photos. And a way to talk to me about your plans before you build.
2126 Education
Carbonless 2126 is a 40-course building science program, built to be taught at the college level and used for continuing education. It follows a building from the dirt to the person living in it a hundred years from now, and each course builds on the last.
It comes from Brian Iverson’s 52 years in the field. It was written before Carbonless had a single sponsor, so no company had a say in what it teaches. Plain English. No sales pitch. The first course is free.
Fix or Remodel a Home / Building
Your house is drafty, damp, or the bills are too high. Most people rip out the wrong thing and pay for it twice. I’ve walked through thousands of houses like yours. Find the cause first, then fix it once, the right way.
Inside: real photos of rot, mold, wet walls and a window ready to fall out, so you know what to look for. Then the books that show you how to fix it from the inside or the outside, the wall and roof numbers your HVAC contractor needs, and a way to talk to me about your house.
Join Carbonless
Do you want to make a difference in the world? Do you want to represent your clients better? Do you want the deepest knowledge you can get about the whole built environment, from the land developer drawing the first lot line to the realtor selling that house for the 25th time, 150 years from today?
Take a seat at the Carbonless Roundtable: 26 gatherings a year with builders, owners and building professionals learning from each other. Bring your questions and hear what’s working on real jobs around the world.
Members get all 40 courses of Carbonless 2126, the Roundtable and its recordings, the digital field guides and the Wall and Roof Assembly Library. Members can also be listed in the Carbonless Directory. Homeowners, builders, remodelers and inspectors all sit at the same table.
A REAL JOB
The hot roof that went wrong.
An architect tried to stop the ice dams with a hot roof: closed cell foam sprayed on the bottom side of the roof deck. But nobody fixed the heat getting out through all the framing. Six years later they still had 4-foot icicles, heat tape on the roof, and $500 a month every winter. That is when they called me, and Carbonless designed the fix: the Roof Lung.
The hot roof. Closed cell foam on the bottom side of the roof deck. The framing still leaks heat.
Snow melting from underneath. Heat getting out of the house.
4-foot icicles over the windows, every winter.
The fix. Same roof, frosty morning. Before and after the Roof Lung.
Before the Roof Lung. You can see every truss in the frost. That is heat getting out of the house.
After the Roof Lung. You can’t see the trusses anymore. The heat stays in the house where it belongs. No snow yet this year, so this is our first after photo. More coming this winter. I won’t know for sure until 2027, but I’m 99% sure this one is a win. I also won’t know what it does to the utility bill for a full year. My estimate is about $100 a month or more.
CARBONLESS 2126
Every house, every building, every project, followed for 100 years, one course at a time.
A house is not built once and done. Over 100 years, the same house may be refinanced 20 times, insured by 20 different companies, and have title insurance sold on it 25 times. With a buying side and a selling side every time it sells, as many as 50 realtors could touch it.
Every trade touches it too: the landowner, the developer, the surveyor, the banker, the architect, the builder, the framer, the insulation contractor, the HVAC contractor, the inspector, the remodeler and the family living inside. Most of them never learned the same thing. That is how one person’s mistake becomes the next owner’s problem.
Carbonless 2126 is 40 courses that put all of them at the same table. It follows a building from the dirt forward:
The land and how it gets developed
The site, the soil and the water
The plan and the design
The money: financing, insurance and the real cost to live there
The foundation, walls and roof
Air, moisture and mold
Heating, cooling and fresh air
Getting it built and inspected
Testing it and writing down what was done
Living in it, fixing it and passing it on
Each course is two hours or more of real education, built from real jobs. Pass its 20-question test with 80% or better and you get a Record of Completion with your name on it.
The first course is free. Start there, and see the whole table before you spend a dollar.
Carbonless is not accredited by a licensing board. Many boards let you report continuing education yourself, so ask yours whether it counts.
Brian Iverson, founder of Carbonless, also wrote Hammerdahl, a novel set in the year 2126. It looks back at the decisions we make today and how they affect the people living 100 years from now.
Justin, Visten Group
What You Don't Know About a Building Can Cost You for the Rest of Your Life.
I’m Brian Iverson. I started in construction at 14. In 52 years I’ve developed about 3,000 acres into more than 3,000 lots and closed more than 3,000 real estate transactions. When a bank foreclosed on about 3,000 properties, the bank hired me to manage selling them. I’ve built 24 miles of road, designed more than 750 buildings that were built, and remodeled or retrofitted more than 300 more. I’m a former Minnesota Certified Energy Auditor. Along the way I made mistakes that cost me millions. I can’t get that money back, but I can help you avoid them.
Carbonless 2126 is forty short courses. Each course is one lesson, two hours or more, with a 20-question test at the end. Pass with 80% and you get a Record of Completion. A beaver does not build a dam with one stick, and a house that lasts 100 to 250 years is not built with one class. All forty together look at a building from all sixteen seats at the table, from the landowner to the person who will live there a hundred years from now. I tell you exactly what is in every course. No products to sell. Just better decisions. The first course is free.
Higher Education for the Next 100 Years.
JOIN CARBONLESS
Why Join Carbonless
People join Carbonless because they want to build something that outlasts them.
The builder who wants his work to still mean something a hundred years from now. The land developer who wants the streets, homes and walking paths he lays out to still be good places to live for generations, because he understands generational housing. The remodeler, the realtor, the lender and the insurance agent who want to sit across the table from a family and tell them the truth about the house.
Nobody here is trying to build something strange. They just want to build differently, so the house lasts longer, costs less to live in, and is healthier inside.
Ask families what they want in a home and the list is almost always the same:
No mold. Clean, healthy air inside.
The lowest utility bill they can get.
A home they can afford to live in, not just buy. That means the payment, the insurance, the taxes and the upkeep.
Low maintenance, not a weekend of repairs every month.
To feel safe from storms, fire and water, and from the things you can’t see in the air.
Comfort in every room. No cold floors, no hot upstairs, no drafts.
A dry house. No roof leaks, no wet basement.
A quiet house.
A home that lasts long enough to hand down.
A home that holds its value and is easy to insure and sell.
Every one of those starts long before the first wall goes up. It starts with the land, the money, the design and the people at the table. That’s what Carbonless teaches. It takes more than one class. It takes all of it.
As a member, you get:
All 40 courses of Carbonless 2126, the complete program.
A direct line to Brian Iverson, and to every other member.
A seat at the Carbonless Roundtable, 26 gatherings a year.
A listing in the Carbonless Directory.
All of it for as long as your membership is active.
Every member agrees to help the others out. If you run into a problem on a house, you are not on your own. You have Brian and the whole membership behind you.
Carbonless is ready for partners.
Carbonless teaches the people who own, live in and work in buildings how to keep them dry and healthy and make them cost less to heat, cool and live in. Next, Carbonless plans to reach more learners and schools, train more people in the trades, document real jobs with real costs, and adapt the courses for other countries and climates. Partnerships are open to companies of every kind. Partners support the teaching. They never buy the answers.
Two free gifts: the calculator and the newsletter.
Everybody wants to know how much extra it costs to build a super energy-efficient house. Most people guess way too high. THE DIFFERENCE Calculator shows you, on your own building, at your own prices. The Carbonless Report is the free monthly newsletter, starting in January 2027: real jobs, real photos and plain answers about what went wrong in a house and how it was fixed. Sign up once and you get both, free.
Help us teach the next family.
Carbonless is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit. Every gift helps put plain-English building education in front of more people.